Film as Revanche Dissecting the Dispositif in New Greek Cinema (original) (raw)

Greek Cinema : Texts , Histories , Identities

2014

This valuable anthology on Greek cinema edited by Lydia Papadimitriou and Yannis Tzioumakis – the first to be published in English as a book – makes a wide and twofold gesture towards international and Greek academia. It calls for the reevaluation of a vibrant, multivalent and fascinating, though marginal European film culture and also for a rethinking of the parameters for the study of Greek film. This gesture towards recognition and reassessment is particularly compelling since it occurs at a very critical but propitious moment: when Greek film, having crossed the borders to become a celebrated new voice on the international festival circuit, is marked by unusual extroversion; when – although nation-centric approaches have become less relevant in Film Studies – a growing focus on peripheral and small-nation cinemas has opened up a new space for neglected cinematic traditions; and finally, when the country’s precarious financial situation has brought about a renegotiation of Greek ...

A new cinema of 'emancipation': Tendencies of Independence in Greek cinema of the 2000s

This article contextualizes recent developments in Greek cinema, namely the rise of a new generation of film-makers who rejuvenated film-making in Greece and attracted widespread international and domestic attention. It shifts the focus to the wider cultural, institutional, technological, financial and sociopolitical context and examines this new film trend as one aspect of the much broader changes taking place in the Greek audio-visual sector throughout the 2000s. It explores the driving forces behind the trend, discusses its major characteristics and argues that it is the result of a combination of factors: the rapid growth and prosperity of the Greek commercial audio-visual industry, the enduring financial poverty and institutional failure of the Greek film sector, new forms of cinephilia, developments in communication and image recording practices deriving from new technologies, generational conflict and societal crisis, as well as growing tensions in the Greek public domain between constitutional authority and new modes of articulating public discourse. Finally, it illustrates how each one of these factors found a response in Greek film culture through gestures of independence and emancipation from established practices, institutions and ideologies.

Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities, edited by Lydia Papadimitriou & Yannis Tzioumakis (2012)

This valuable anthology on Greek cinema edited by Lydia Papadimitriou and Yannis Tzioumakis -the first to be published in English as a book -makes a wide and twofold gesture towards international and Greek academia. It calls for the reevaluation of a vibrant, multivalent and fascinating, though marginal European film culture and also for a rethinking of the parameters for the study of Greek film. This gesture towards recognition and reassessment is particularly compelling since it occurs at a very critical but propitious moment: when Greek film, having crossed the borders to become a celebrated new voice on the international festival circuit, is marked by unusual extroversion; whenalthough nation-centric approaches have become less relevant in Film Studies -a growing focus on peripheral and small-nation cinemas has opened up a new space for neglected cinematic traditions; and finally, when the country's precarious financial situation has brought about a renegotiation of Greek identity while increasing the international receptivity to Greek culture.

Crisis of Sovereignty in Recent Greek Cinema

Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 2015

Greek cinema is on the rise during a period of deepening economic and political crisis. Films such as Dogtooth, Attenberg and Alps have won critical acclaim and awards at international film festivals. They have been produced under increasingly difficult conditions, at a time when funding for social and cultural programs in Greece is being cut precipitously. What is the relationship between this cinematic resurgence and the crisis? To what extent are these films a response to the troubles that grip the country? This essay relates the depiction of agency in Lanthimos’s and Tsangari’s films to the decline of popular sovereignty in European politics, Greek peripheral modernity and epochal transformations in Greek film culture.

Locating Contemporary Greek Film Cultures: Past, Present, Future and the Crisis

Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, 2014

This article offers a critical contextualisation of developments in Greek cinema around the nodal date of 2009, which brought together the beginning of the financial crisis, an increased international visibility of certain Greek films, significant grassroot-motivated institutional changes for cinema in Greece, as well as the emergence of Anglophone criticism on Greek cinema. In so doing, it aims to identify key dimensions of contemporary Greek film cultures, and point towards some possible developments in terms of modes of production and reception of Greek cinema, but also new frameworks for its critical understanding.

Topics in Greek Film

2014

This inter-and cross-disciplinary course addresses a wide range of fields from film theory and aesthetics to cultural studies and history, exploring questions of film style, transnational and cosmopolitan filmmaking practices, national industries and audience reception. We will begin by discussing recent debates in film studies about (trans)national and peripheral cinemas before proceeding to a reading of a few paradigmatic cases of films that are either produced in Greece or deal about Greece. You are encouraged to critically reflect on the introduced approaches in (trans)national, peripheral and cosmopolitan filmmaking, read films filmically (in terms of their narrative and style), locate them in their wider socio-political and economic contexts of production and reception, and suggest other case studies based on your own background and interests. We will approach films from a Cultural Studies perspective. This means that while a film may be entertaining in its own right, we will want to view it also with an eye to what it can tell us about the history of a particular time, place and movement.